“My name is professor Phillip Goodman. My job is to explain the unexplainable, untangle the truth from fiction.

“You don’t have to have your life ruled by superstitious fear. The brain sees what it wants to see.

“I understand how easy it is to get confused.

“Everything is exactly as it seems…”

A few lines from the upcoming British horror film “Ghost Stories”, releasing in 2018. The premise is that a skeptical professor who debunks tales of ghosts receives an anonymous package. It contains details of three supposed hauntings, “unsolved” by the mysterious messenger.

The professor embarks on an investigation which, as the trailer suggests, is full of enlightenment (and terror) for our skeptic.

I hadn’t heard of this before, but I’m intrigued by the trailer. The only actor I recognize in the cast is Martin Freeman, who I’ve not yet seen in a horror role, unless you count “The World’s End”.

According to IMDB, it’s already hit some film festivals in 2017 and opens in UK theaters in April 2018. The US release just says 2018, but hopefully it’ll be around the same time as overseas. Not sure if this will release wide enough for me to see it in a local theater, but I’ll certainly be streaming it whenever it’s available.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!”

Wait, this is a site about ghosts and the like, why am I writing about Christmas?

Sad to see that Tobe Hooper, director of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Poltergeist” has died. “Poltergeist”, in my opinion, is one of the most perfect ghost stories ever told on film. While it certainly has its share of jump scares and gross-outs (the scene with the guy scraping his face off in the mirror?), it really is, at its heart, a ghost story. And kind of a sad one at that.

Even though there are still many who claim it was Steven Spielberg (the film’s credited producer), and not Hooper, who actually directed most of the movie, Poltergeist is still his legacy. I’ve also never seen his mini-series he directed of the Stephen King story “Salem’s Lot”. Now I feel like I need to seek it out.

Last October, I posted about an upcoming movie about the Winchester Mystery House starring Helen Mirren. At the time there were scarce few details, but now, we’ve gotten a 2018 release date and the first photo of Mirren as Sarah Winchester.

Here’s hoping for a classic haunted house story. The brothers directing it just finished “Saw: Legacy”, which in my mind is not a good omen.